Effective vaccines against respiratory viruses, including influenza A, SARS-CoV-2, endemic coronaviruses, RSV, and many other “common cold” viruses, have not yet been developed, according to a new paper coauthored by Dr. Anthony Fauci.
So far, scientists have not been able to create vaccines that effectively protect against non-systemic respiratory viruses which can cause severe illness or death.
“Durably protective vaccines against non-systemic mucosal respiratory viruses with high mortality rates have thus far eluded vaccine development efforts,” Fauci writes in the publication.
Despite previous efforts to develop vaccines that prevent respiratory viral diseases, many of these attempts have been unsuccessful.
“Past unsuccessful attempts to elicit solid protection against mucosal respiratory viruses and to control the deadly outbreaks and pandemics they cause have been a scientific and public health failure that must be urgently addressed,” Fauci adds.
He goes on to blame vaccines’ failures to protect against illness and death on the complexity of developing shots that can effectively elicit protective immunity against viruses that persist in human populations, admitting that currently available vaccines “fail to elicit natural protective immunity.”
“We must better understand why multiple sequential mucosal infections with the same circulating respiratory viruses, spread out over decades of life, fail to elicit natural protective immunity,” Fauci writes, before highlighting the need to end current vaccine production strategies.
“We must think outside the box to make next-generation vaccines that elicit immune protection against viruses that survive in human populations because of their ability to remain significantly outside of the full protective reach of human innate and adaptive immunity,” Fauci says.
The paper emphasizes that there is much work to be done in order to make progress in developing effective vaccines against respiratory viruses.
“We are excited and invigorated that many investigators and collaborative groups are rethinking, from the ground up, all of our past assumptions and approaches to preventing important respiratory viral diseases and working to find bold new paths forward,” the article states.
